A couple months ago I was approached by a book publishing company. They found this website through one of my book review posts and wanted me to be part of the technical review team of a new book they are releasing.

Curiosity and challenge

I’ve been doing book reviews for a while and thought it sounded like a natural evolution for this ‘hobby’. Without thinking twice I said yes.

The subject of the book was very close to me: responsive web design with HTML5 and CSS3. And it was aimed for beginners. Now, this changes things a little as you have to keep in mind the target audience.

The learning curve

As a technical reviewer you have to make sure the code and techniques are on spot and make sense with the proposed topics. As we all know, there are a dozen ways of achieving the same outcome in web development, so you have to keep your personal preferences aside while reviewing someone else’s work. And, being a book for beginners, you also have to suggest and indicate the easiest path to take whilst maintaining the reader interested.

Job done

Eight chapters later and it was done.

It is more time consuming that you might think, but it’s a very pleasant experience. There is so much to learn by reading other people’s point of view on a subject and their approach to find a solution. And trying to make sure that that solution, not yours, works, it’s challenging.